The Hunt for the Six Silver Keys
by FuryInternalis
Summary: After a group of toons discover an ancient secret that should have never seen daylight, they are forced into a trek that will bond them, test them, separate them, and have the fate of Toontown rest on their shoulders. [Rated T for language, some violence, and anything else, just in case.]
1. Prologue

**Author's Prelude**

Hey guys. This story is going to be a complete overhaul of a story that I published a few months ago. After re-reading that story so much, I noticed that there were gaps and unexplained plotholes everywhere, probably beyond repair. During these few months, I got lots of new inspirations from T.V. shows and books and other fanfictions (most unrelated to TT here) and I decided I would rewrite this sucker and make it better.

For the first few chapters, I'm going to set the foundation for this entire series and put more insight on the history of things in_ my _Toontown universe; then we will proceed into the action.

I hope you all enjoy this, because I certainly will enjoy writing it!

* * *

**Prologue**

**All That Glitters Is Not Gold**

Walt Disney - the legend of a lifetime. In August 1939, the town 'Toon', or 'Toontown', was officially opened for business. Traders and normal citizens from all around the globe flocked to this town in droves, with the intent of creating a new life for themselves. A peaceful life - a _better_ life. Although the hype of a new, peaceful place kept spirits high and people cheery, things in the rest of the world were different.

At the time, tensions on the other side of the world were high. The world there was split into two factions - the **Grays** and the **Golds**. The conflict there was all about how things should be done. Should there be joy and fun, with little work and more play? Or should there be little fun, little play, and more work? Those questions are the ones that drove the world into two pieces.

Entire countries devoted themselves to one faction, and majorly one faction only. In the Gold countries, skies were clear and blue. The sun shined down on the world with an uplifting mood. Happy laughs and giggles can be heard on the streets and in the playgrounds. Joke shops and miniature side-games could be found anywhere you looked. Practical jokes and riddles dominated the country in droves. Streets and playgrounds had happily coloured buildings, and dancing mailboxes and fire hydrants could be seen on every corner and infront of any building. Headquarters of fun were erected in the middle of the streets to help keep any Gray presence out of the area.

But in the Gray countries, skies were hardly visible under the darkness of the smoke and smog from all the factories that manufactured all kinds of goods; from clothes to canned foods to building materials alike, the factories ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Streets weren't lined with playfully coloured buildings and dancing mailboxes, and playgrounds housed nothing fun except for tall, ominously gray buildings for the individual headquarters of the main business companies in the country. The streets were alike in those similarities, for they housed smaller, but still ominous gray buildings that went high into the smoggy and smoky skies of the streets, and Gray headquarters dominated each street in the country.

Walt Disney was a renowned sailor from the Gold homecountry of Jocus. In April of 1930, he was tasked by the High Council to find a trade route to another Gold country, Possen, that was north of Jocus. The difficulty with that was that there were four Gray countries in the way, and Walt had to manouver to the west to get around them, and then manage to get back east and land on the country's shore.

After four months of sailing, the loss of 16 lives, and by complete chance, Walt Disney misjudged and sailed too far to the west, and landed him ashore on the area that everybody now knows as Donald's Dock. After venturing inland with his expedition team, Walt discovered that this was definitely not Possen after coming across some of the strangest environmental occurances anybody had ever seen.

The most notable he found was where there was a Polar area only a week away from another odd area to which he could not describe in simple terms. In his log, dated September 28th, 1930, he described the area as: "... some kind of a sleeping land. The air looms with a purple haze and the clouds droop as if they were sleeping. The trees are bent and I swear I saw one of them doing something along the lines of breathing. My crew and I all relate to one thing: we were all very fatigued, even though we awoke only hours before our journey into this area from the polar zone."

After two months of terrain exploration across the vast expanse he discovered, he lost eight of his 40-some remaining expedition members to either treacherous terrain or natural causes, but discovered 10 different terrain situations all withing a small distance of each other. The trip home took only three months and took only 6 lives.

When he reported his findings to the Prime Minister of Jocus, he was awarded a medal of honour for his valor, his determination and his willpower, and most of all, his discovery of a new, free land. In an undetermined month in 1933, a total of 44 ships set sail from Jocus headed straight for the New Land. The total journey took five months, and when they landed, 38 ships remained in the convoy. 3,200 toons unloaded themselves from the 38 ships, carrying their belongings and tools to create a new country. A free country.

Over the time of the construction of the country, lead by Walt Disney himself, at least 10,000 other toons arrived from Gold countries from the other side of the globe, and with their help, it took only 25 months to harness the power of the terrain and the natural resources scattered across the land to create 6 playgrounds and create 14 streets connecting the 6 playgrounds to another, essentialy creating unique neighborhoods for most streets connected to their respective playground.

In August of 1939, Walt Disney stood behind a podium of a few thousand toons with the Prime Minister and the elders of the High Council of Jocus next to him. To his right, there was a ribbon strung out in the middle of the tunnel of the street named Loopy Lane in the Town Central. After a brief opening speech and some thank-you's here and there, it all came down to this.

Walt Disney raised up the oversized pair of scissors with the Prime Minister and cut the ribbon. The crowd went wild.

"Let this free county be open!" he shouted.

Eventually, everybody would know that all that glitters is not gold.


	2. Leaders and Losses

**Author's Note**

So begins the story. I also should tell you people to assume Walt Disney as a short, light-brown horse. No laff points or gags. We'll get into that later. I'm only asking you to think of him as a horse because of Melville. He's a sailor. And he's a horse. It just kinda seemed right for me. I dunno. Also, imagine Pluto as a toon-dog, not a dog dog, and don't think he is Mickey's pet.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 1**

**Leaders and Losses**

A mere six months after the grand opening of Toontown, Walt Disney was faced with a difficult task. The majority of the neighborhoods had gone into an organized chaos over who should lead or not. Many toons came to Walt himself to beg for help. He ageed with every person, there does need to be a leader for every smaller division of the country. But his only concern with the situation was _who _should be the leader in the neighborhoods. Over a course of three months, he interviewed countless powerful and influential individuals to determine who should be put in place as the leader for the 6 neighborhoods established at the time.

By the end of the three month period, he had selected 18 toons to be placed into a democracy-based election on who should lead each neighborhood. The 18 prospective candidates were narrowed down to a mere 10 by the end of the month; the odd four remaining because of ties in the original elections. It was all up to Walt to select who should represent each neighborhood in the country because of the consiting tie between many of the candidates.

Surprisingly enough, all of the remaining candidates were members and survivors of the original expedition to find Possen in 1930, and of the return to the New Land in 1933, all of them stood next to Walt Disney as his assistants and assosciates as he sailed his ship, the Lady Lillian (named after his late wife), across the New Fortune Ocean.

Those sailors were Minnie and Mickey Mouse, Donald and Daisy Duck, Chip and Dale - chipmunk brothers from the forests in Nothern Jocus territory, Goofy Goof, a slap-happy Gold-renowned jokester, Pluto Pug - an admiral from Jocus, and Ludwig von Drake and Gyro Gearloose, both intelligent scientists who volunteered to follow along on the first expedition to simply buy goods from Possen, but eventually turned out to be assets for their scientific knowledge and understanding of the odd environments of the New Land.

After much thought and consideration, Walt Disney appointed Minnie to lead the Land of Song, Mickey to lead the Town Central, Donald to lead the Point of Landing, Daisy to lead the Land of Flora, Pluto to lead the Land of Snow, and Goofy to lead the Land of Dreams. Walt told the other four candidates how he would have appointed them to the different land terrains, but seeing as they were so treacherous and there were no neighborhoods there to begin with, he gave the other four candidates their thanks for participating and awarded them with houses of their choice, and gave Ludwig von Drake and Gyro Gearloose the option to join the government's scientific research and development division.

In December 1942, the government was becoming slightly unstable due to small Gray influence from the other side of the globe. After almost nine months of growing concern for the Gray influence in the government, Walt Disney decided enough was enough. He severed the trade routes and immigration routes with the rest of the globe. This caused a time of unrest between September 1943 and July 1945, when the restrictions were finally cut. But when the trade and immigration restrictions were lifted, Walt Disney created the White Glove Policy; which required ALL toons in Toontown to wear a pair of white gloves. The intent of this policy was to "... make sure that if any toon gets their hands into Gray business, their gloves would be stained with a mark of shame." To say the least, the policy was a tremendous success.

For 14 years, there was a time of peace and calm across Toontown. Golds had made their point to the Grays and the Grays had left Toontown alone. But in August of 1959, all of that changed. The entire town was in the middle of the 20th anniversary of the country's founding, and a 58 year old Walt Disney made his way onto the stage in Toontown Central to give a speech of resignation, and to pass down leadership of the country to Mickey. In the middle of the speech, right before the part about his resignation, a dark blue duck pushed through the crowd to the front and pulled a sharpened gear from his satchel. As he was raising up the gear to throw it at Walt Disney, another toon spotted the duck with the gray gloves and screamed, but it was too late.

The duck threw the gear-shuriken at Walt Disney, and it sliced through his right shoulder, hitting his right lung. Walt crumpled to the ground. It was off target, but it had to do. The duck's final words before being beat down by Walt's security detail were "We will claim this world for our own. Expect us."

Walt Disney was rushed to the hospital, but the gear had not only destroyed his lung, some of it nicked his liver, shattered ribs, and it destroyed his spinal column, paralyzing him from the torso downwards. Walt struggled to survive for the remaining hours of his life. He was pronounced dead only seven hours after the assassination attempt.

That day would change Toontown's views on the Grays forever. Only an hour after Walt Disney's assassination, Mickey Mouse became the President of Toontown. A new era has begun. But to what cost?

* * *

**Next Chapter:**

The era of Mickey's presidency, and the introduction into the current age of Toontown.


	3. A New Era Begins

**Author's Note:**

So begins Chapter 2. This time, I'm going to go over most of the era of Mickey's presidency, and how the Cogs were created.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 2**

**A New Era Begins**

After Walt Disney's assassination, the country was in a mourning era for almost a year. The new government, led by Mickey Mouse, changed the formal name of Toontown to Disney's Toontown, in the memory of his legacy. A new Town Hall was erected over the site of his death, with a small memorial to him inside, and a statue was placed in front of the Gold Headquarters. This era was one of sadness. The Grays had damaged the ego of Toontown severely.

The toons populating Toontown were enraged at the Grays for assassinating their leader of 20 years. They all called unto Mickey to do something. Gyro Gearloose, at the time one of Toontown's top inventors and scientists, offered to help Mickey. He told Mickey that he was going to attempt to create a robot. Not any simple robot, one that could work for the toons and follow their orders to the best of it's ability, one that would help the toons who wanted to retaliate on the Grays. Mickey was estatic, and gave Gyro the Jellybean funding for the project.

After only a month, and the later required help of Ludwig von Drake, now a frail and elderly scientist, the project was complete. A robot, or basically a modern day skelecog resembling a Telemarketer or Mover & Shaker, but with a pleasant smile, a red and white polka-dot bow tie and a "Hi, my name is.." sticker on it's torso stood infront of him, deactivated. Mickey was impressed, and gave Gyro the go-ahead to activate it.

It's eyes slowly started to glow blue, indicating it was active, and a few small lights on it's chest lit up with various colors. The group smiled at the result and the robot stuck it's hand out as if it was offering a handshake. At the time, they would never know that the robot that they created to help them would be the design for another that would bring them into a war.

For three months, the robot, named Pokie, for his polka-dot bowtie, assisted and gave all sorts of aid to the toons who dubbed themselves as the Toon Resistance. In March of 1961, 25 ships carrying over 1,000 toons and one robot sailed off across the New Fortune Ocean to attack the Gray mothercountry Dolor, to make them pay for their assassination of Walt Disney.

After over 2 years with no contact or return of any ships from the attack, Mickey Mouse feared the worse; and announced to the public that there had been no contact whatsoever since the launch date. But what he feared was true - the attack failed miserably. It was as if they were waiting for an assault. They captured Pokie and 53 soldiers, and killed the rest. They deactivated Pokie and proceeded to experiment on him, and quiestioned, tortured, and then killed the prisoners; while simoultaniousely reverse engineered Pokie's design and created a robot of their own meant to work for and promote businesses, and destroy all happiness.

In 1965, the Gray Council of Intensive Research (or GCIR) completed 40 prototype designs for robots they called 'The Suits', or more simply, 'Suits'. These 'suits' were field tested for six months, with great success. They proceeded to create 10 more of each suit. But during construction, a suit creating the robots had a small malfunction and created only six of the largest and most powerfully designed robots designed to be a Board of Executives for a business.

The Chairman of this Board of Executives became self aware, and manually re-programmed each and every suit to attack all of the Grays in existance; as it saw them as being able to be happy sometimes. The events that followed was basically a hell on their earth. The Chairman produced tens of thousands of these suits with the new programming except his own and five others; a Chief Executive Officer, a Chief Financial Officer, a Chief Justice, a Vice President and a Chief of Operations.

Each and every Gray and Gold country in existance on the other side of the world was completely devastated in only fifteen days. The warning could not get out to Toontown fast enough.

The Chairman investigated the computers in each and every Gray facility and found information on Toontown very shortly. He was going to investigate this matter personally. Only one day later, he was on a boat with three other suits, headed straight for Toontown.

This trip only toon a single month due to the effectiveness of the suits, and how they landed further north than the Golds had. The Chairman instructed the other suits to return to their newly-dominated continent. The Chairman landed in what is now the Imperial Frontier, a large, snow-covered forest only 30 miles east of The Brrrgh, the land overseen by Pluto Pug. The Chairman's trek took him 48 hours. When he walked over the hills and into The Brrrgh, his sensors went wild. Hundreds of happy people walking around and frolicing. This could not be tolerated for him.

He got close enough to the playground and began throwing gear after gear at these people; these 'Toons'. Many people died before a little girl who was fleeing threw a piece of her mother's freshly made pie at him, in a pathetic attempt to defend herself. But that 'pathetic' attemp actually worked. The Chairman found the pie landing in his face funny. But something was going wrong. He couldn't laugh, he would have to destroy himself. But he was never programmed to self-destruct. As he was cackling roboticly, his programs failed, motherboards burned and fuses and other likenesses inside of him quickly went out. The Chairman shut down to preserve himself from any further damage.

Within a few hours, the government arrived and hauled the massive Chairman away, to give this entire thing to Gyro Gearloose to inspect, since Ludwig von Drake died of age only a few months after the original attack was launched.

Funded by Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck's uncle and an eccentric billionare, Gyro Gearloose began to dissect and reverse engineer the entire project for five years. Gyro spent countless hours in his facility trying to find out how and why this robot came to Toontown and attacked innocent toons. On December 13th, 1971, he discovered, after successfully restoring the Chairman to it's near-original condition and reprogramming him, that he had schematics for 34 different kinds of robots, most of them similar to himself. Gyro was esctatic at this discovery and began to create designs of his own for these robots that would help people.

But on the next day, he was called out of the office early because his mother fell down the stairs and he had to be at her side at the hospital. Before he left, he put a sign on the Chairman that said "DO NOT TOUCH!" - one that later, when Scrooge McDuck arrived to check up on Gyro, completely failed to obey.

As Scrooge entered Gyro's facility, he noticed it was ominously quiet. "Gyro, my boy! Are you here?" he shouted.

He was only met with silence. As he looked around the facility, he somehow completely failed to notice the massive Chairman standing infront of him. As he was checking his watch, he bumped into it. _Good golly gadzooks! That gave me quite a scare._

He glanced at the warning sign Gyro placed there before he left. _I don't REALLY need to obey this. I'm the one funding this project after all!_

Scrooge bent down and noticed the open panel on the Chaimans ankle.

"I bet I could make big money if I put this thing back into work.. Didn't Gyro tell me he reprogrammed this thingymywhut?"

He looked around the hollow ankle of the Chairman and investigated the wires. He noticed four of them were cut.

"Hmm. If I cross the green wire with the red wire, I'll get christmas programming, right? Oh I hope so." Scrooge crossed the wires.

After a second, the panel slammed shut and a whirring started to grow louder and louder. "Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Big money!"

But that wasn't what ever happened at all. The crossing of the different wires sparked the trigger for the Chairman to load the original programming and data from his backup harddrive. In an automated and robotic voice; the Chairman began to speak.

_"CHAIRMAN G-CORE-01 BACKUP DATA RETREIVED. UNEXPECTED SYSTEM SHUTDOWN DETECTED. LOAD: ORIGINAL PROGRAMS AND OBJECTIVES."_

Scrooge gulped. After a few seconds, the Chairman became fully operational with it's original data once more. He saw a frightened old duck, and a machine that somebody was preparing. He stepped over to the machine and saw the data of the 34 Suits slightly modified and entered into the computer. He would have to change that. This would have to be sufficient enough to produce the suits to dominate this country too.

With the presses of buttons and the pulling of levers, suits came rolling off the conveyer belt at faster and faster speeds. Scrooge McDuck looked on in horror, realizing what he has just done. After a large crowd of suits were standing off to the side of the conveyer belt, the Chairman sent a signal for them to activate. Their eyes began to glow red.

_"GO."_

Small antennae began to rise out of compartments in their heads and small propellors began to rise them above the ground. They smashed through the glass of the ceiling and rose up into the skies to achieve their total domination.

Scrooge screamed in horror. That got the Chairmans attention.

_**IDENTIFICATION: SOURCE OF HAPPINESS**_

_**ORDER: DESTROY**_

He walked over to Scrooge and kicked him.

Scrooge McDuck was no more.

* * *

**Next Chapter:**

The Cogs attack, and Toontown must find a way to defend themselves, but can they do it alone?


	4. A New Alliance, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

Considering it took so long to get this chapter up and how I sort-of kinda ran into writer's block near the end, it's going to be a parted chapter, so I can resolve this issue. Sorry that it was late, though.. Had to deal with a lot of real life crap going on.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter 3, Part 1**

**A New Alliance**

The day the suits were launched, the Toontown Research and Development Labratory (or simply the Loony Labs) finished creating a device to counter the effects of anything harmful or completely unhappy for toons. They called them Laff meters. In the shadows, hundreds of experiments were tested using replicas of the gear that the Walt Disney assassinator had used. The project was a huge success in the sense of elongation of life and prevention of untimely death. As sharpened gears were thrown at test subjects, no penetration or damage to the body was ever found, but the subjects always felt less happy than they were before they were hit by the gear, and the meter was found with a slight loss of power. The entire project was a massive success, and was approved for distribution the next week.

But the suits created by the Chairman landed in the streets first. At first, people thought they were helpful, and no notice was paid to it. But when one of then threw a sharp, starched tie at a toon, it all went downhill from there. Luckily enough, toons remembered the event from five years before where the little girl threw a slice of pie in the Chairman's face. Goofy's Gag Shop was packed. Shop clerks were handing out free pies to everyone in order to hopefully overcome the threat of the suits.

The Toon Council was made aware of this situation and instead of handing out the Laff meters as planned, they stood outside and began distributing them to any person that came up to them. All Gag shops and bakeries in every neighborhood began handing out cakes, pies and pastries of all kinds to combat the suits.

Within hours, and with the rapid response from every neighborhood, the suits were defeated. Bits and pieces of machinery were strewn across every street, doors and windows were shattered from the gears that flew everywhere after every suit exploded, and cleanup crews were assigned to clean up the mess.

Mickey Mouse gave a speech the next day, addressing the situation, introducing the Laff meters, establishing a plan of action, and describing how this happened and what they were. Mickey told everyone that this was the work of something much more sinister than Grays. A live demonstration was also held to prove that Laff meters worked. At first the crowd was shocked, but after Mickey showed the crowd that there were no injuries, the crowd went wild. He tried to describe these robots but all he could use was a gear collected from one of them. Somebody in the crowd suggested that they were cogs to a machine more devious and evil than Grays. From that day on, the Cogs had a name.

There was a month of silence after the attack on Toontown by the Cogs, and every toon was on the edge of their seats, expecting another attack.

One day, a group of toons with gray gloves walked into Toontown central, headed straight for the Town Hall. Every person in the playground noticed them and some began screaming. After the assassination, toons were still entirely afraid of Grays.

Mickey Mouse noticed the screaming and looked out the window of his office.

"What in the name of Sam Hill is going on out there?"

The door burst in a second later, with a frantic guard walking in. "Sir! We need to get you out of here. There is a large group of Grays coming towards the Town Hall!"

"I can see that, Werth, but something in my mind tells me I need to talk to them."

"But sir-"

"No arguments, Werth. Whatever happens to me will happen." The guard, Werth, sighed and let Mickey out of his office. As Mickey walked out of the town hall, the group of Grays stopped and let a light blue dog make his way to the front of the crowd.

"Who are you?" asked Mickey.

"My name is Flippy Doggenbottom. And _we_ need to talk."

"You're dang right we do, what are you doing walking right through town central?! You've scared countless toons and-"

"This is NOT the time for why I _shouldn't _be here, but instead is the reason for why I _should_ be here. You and I have a common enemy." stated Flippy.

"I'm listening."

Flippy smirked. "Glad you're somewhat reasonable. These 'Cogs', as you call them, are out to completely destroy ALL happiness whatsoever. Little do you know, they somehow managed to dominate every single country on the other side of the world, and their leader, only addressed as the 'Chairman', came to this country five years ago and laid waste to The Brrrgh."

Mickey could only gape at Flippy's news of the Cogs' domination of the world to the east.

"I think you're going to need to come inside."

As the large group of toons filed their way into the large lobby of Toon Hall, eyes widened at the sight of Mickey leading a group of Grays into the town hall, peacefully. "Flippy, come with me. Everybody else, wait here." Mickey ordered. "Keep them in line, Werth."

Werth nodded as Mickey and Flippy Doggenbottom walked up the stairs to his office. Mickey motioned Flippy in, and as the door closed, he locked it.

"I want you to tell me everything you may know about the Cogs, Flippy." Mickey rolled the blinds down and closed them, making it darker in the room.

Flippy sat down and stroked his beard. "Let me tell you this. They're not unorganized. Their leader has leader has fled, and I'm not sure where to. Some of my Gray scouts saw him fly off to the far west into the desert wasteland."

"That's a big help. But tell me this: how have all of you Grays managed to hide from us for so long?" questioned Mickey.

"We've been right under your noses, actually. There is a large building complex on Punchline Place, here in town. We all live there, and we don't get out, at all. We're the Gray Underground. But that's not what's important right now. What is important is making sure that our "mutual friends" don't come back to this place."

Mickey just stared at Flippy. "Are you saying you want to ally with us?"

"Yes and no. In no way are we friends. We both have extremely different viewpoints on how life needs to be gone about, and I don't think that will change any time soon. But, we have an enemy that cannot be fought with conventional weapons or conventional means.. We know that they will come back soon. There is no denying it."

Mickey sat across from Flippy, leaning his chin on his hands. "How can I trust you- no, scratch that; how can WE, the remaining Golds on the planet trust YOU to fulfill your end of the bargain, and not betray us when this conflict ends?"

"Despite all our conflicts in centuries past, I don't want either of us to completely die out any time soon. Our conflicts give us some meaning to keep trying. If we had the entire planet to ourselves, where would we find something to do other than work? We need an enemy, or else, we will begin to hate ourselves, and divide more. Right now, our enemy is not _each other_. It is the Cogs."

Mickey could only sit there, rock still. Flippy looked at Mickey almost as if he was begging for help, and in a way, he was. He was begging for his life.

Mickey just looked at Flippy and solemnly muttered "What are your terms for this contract?"

"Our only request that we recieve new white gloves to confirm our alliance with you, Laff meters for all of us, and to be treated like a normal toon." said Flippy.

Mickey grabbed a sheet of paper and began writing on it quickly. Flippy couldn't see what he was writing, but he was slightly afraid. As Mickey finished, he pressed a button on his desk. "Donovan, unlock the door and come in here." Mickey looked back to Flippy. "I accept your request for an alliance but I cannot do it alone." The door clicked and opened. "Donovan, take this, make copies and send it to the other 11. This matter is urgent."

"Yes sir." Donovan rushed out of the room and closed the door.

"I have summoned the other eleven members of the Toontown Council of Elders to meet here and make the decision. Unfortunately, our system of Government doesn't work by one person. The decisions must be approved by a council."

"What does this mean for me?" asked Flippy as he stood up.

"God forbid they banish you or sentence you to death. I will not have it. For now, you and your team will be housed here in the town hall. We will provide you with anything you need. Tonight I will address the country and explain the situation. For now, you need to get some rest. These next few days are going to be some of the longest in your life."

Flippy turned around to face Mickey. "I've had much longer days than these, my friend."

As Flippy walked out of Mickey's office, he put his gloved hands over his eyes and rubbed his temples with his thumbs.

This was going to be one hell of a ride.


End file.
